Hi, Ken, belatedly.

'Plaintive' may well be it. I asked the question because I'm no nearer
to knowing how to deal with death. For this one, I was pretty much an
outsider. And also an outsider to requiems, as such. I prefer the Latin
texts rather than the English and, for me, they carry little baggage. I
can hear them sung and that seems enough. Although I did check a
translation, just so's I knew how it went and where to break the text.

In this instance the Faure would have been the only consolation.

Cheers,
Jill

On Friday, May 20, 2005, at 04:51  AM, Ken Wolman wrote:

> Jill Jones wrote:
>
>> Thank you Stephen. I hope that, and am sure that, the things that need
>> to be said get said.
>>
>> I wish it had been like that yesterday. At least we had the Paradisum
>> section of Faure.
>>
>> Best,
>> Jill
>
> Comment deferred is not comment denied.  It's just hard for me to say
> anything coherent and not a brain-dropping about something so lovely.
> Whatever.  Is it okay to describe the tone as "plaintive"?  Indeed, it
> reminds me of the Faure music: sadness, sweetness, and consolation hold
> each other in balance.  This keeps coming back at me:
>
> "but of the things
> no-one can know
> can we sing?"
>
> I suppose the answer is yes, otherwise only the dead would have voices.
> I'm tempted to try to get into the issue of how deeply our (or any?)
> culture struggles with coming to terms with death.  Not "understanding"
> it--just struggling to cope with the absolute Unknown.  The New York
> Times today has a story on Stanley Kunitz, who is about to turn 100.
> He
> seems unafraid: "I don't want to think about anything, except to become
> language."
>
> Faure faced it in the way of religious consolation.  How many others
> have composed music based on the Latin Requiem Mass?  And there are
> poets: *Timor mortis conturbat me*--and it goes back how far before
> that?  I don't know how effectively the written or simply spoken word
> actually gets us over timor mortis or a sense of loss, even Donne's
> defiant sonnet which has its eyes on the 2nd birth in which people may
> or may not believe.  Maybe song is the only way to surmount fear or
> grief?  Ben Jonson has those two wonderful brief elegies on his son and
> daughter that almost have the music built in, and I'd not be surprised
> to find that they've already been set as art songs or choral pieces.
> Though music itself is no guarantee; it too can present answers that
> seem all but intolerable.  Arrigo Boito, the Italian poet/composer who
> created the libretto for Verdi's *Otello*, created a "Rule of Life" for
> Iago, a solo that parodies the Credo, expounding his belief in a "cruel
> God," concluding with "And after all this illusion...death.  And then?
> And then?  Death is nullity, and Heaven is an old lie."  Verdi's 1874
> Requiem for Alessandro Manzoni, unlike Faure's, seems to have to fight
> its way to consolation and hope: the Dies Irae is a raging brass-driven
> vision of terror and Hell that modulates over its length into a
> desperate plea ("Libera me, Domine!").
>
> I've joked that I wanted the Faure Requiem at my funeral, not the
> Verdi.  As it is I'll settle for a few Barbara Cook recordings.
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
>
_______________________________________________________
Jill Jones

Latest books:
Broken/Open. Available from Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844710416.htm

Where the Sea Burns. Wagtail Series. Picaro Press
PO Box 853, Warners Bay, NSW, 2282. [log in to unmask]

Struggle and radiance: ten commentaries (Wild Honey Press)
http://www.wildhoneypress.com

web site: http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
blog1:  Ruby Street http://rubystreet.blogspot.com/
blog2:  Latitudes  http://itudes.blogspot.com/